America's Gun Control

Three quarters of states have to vote to ratify any amendments to the Constitution. It's not easy. The Equal Rights Amendment still hasn't been ratified about 60 years after it was drafted.

The language about gun ownership - and I write as someone who doesn't own one and doesn't want one, and I've lived in America for over 20 years - is just silly. I live in Maine where there is a high rate of gun ownership and open carry is legal. I've literally never seen one waved around although I know hunters use them. Our gun death rate is somewhat lower than many other states and I don't believe we've ever had a school shooting.

I'm not denying that there is a problem, but wild exaggeration isn't going to sell the solution to the large majority of responsible owners of legal guns.

How would you go about taking the guns from otherwise law-abiding citizens who refuse to give them up? Shoot them? Who would be willing to do this? The local police who have known them for years? The Feds? You'd start a civil war.

Please explain to the group the process that has to be gone through in order to make an amendment to the constitution. I'll give you a clue. It needs 2/3rds of one thing and 3/4 of another...bonus points if you can tell me how long it took to ratify the 27th amendment.

But this is the thing.

I genuinely think that even if an American mistakenly, accidentally killed their own child, they would still believe that their right to bear arms should override everything else, including the life of that child.

Guns are essential, humans are dispensable.

They can trot out the 'thoughts and prayers' line but essentially Americans value guns above everything else.

I find it a bit weird that Americans/people who live in America on this thread are saying that people from other countries are too ignorant about guns to comment. Why would the people who live in the country which its peers view as aberrant, and which has evidently failed in safe gun ownership (and fails at it on a daily basis), be the right people to ask about whether guns should be legal? We can all see, looking in, that the system clearly doesn't work as there are dozens of school shootings a year, plus all the other shootings. "It's in the constitution" is archaic and frankly offensive reasoning when so many lives are at stake, and not even internally consistent (given that it's an amendment). It's like living next door to a family who routinely beat each other up, and them telling you not to comment because you don't get their family culture, and they can see things more clearly than you.

Probably true, strange as it seems. Because people are born and die. The constitution remains. Americans see it is as if they give up the right to bear arms because of an incident today, they'll lose that right forever. And while it might seem unlikely that the US government turns on the citizens today, in 30, 50, 100 years from now the situation might be very different.

It's been done 27 times in your country's relatively short history so there is clearly a process. Like I don't need to know the minutiae of gutting a fish, i do know it is a process that has been done many times in the past and can be done.
Just because it took 202 years to sort the last one out (limiting congresses power to give themselves pay rises - funny how those in positions of power may want to drag their heels about something like that) doesn't mean other have to take as long - and even if it does, it still gets there in the end.

It's not ignorance about guns that irritates me when British people pontificate about gun control in the US ( and I speak as a British expat). It's ignorance of the way the American Constitution and political system works. Yes of course there should be better methods of control but it just isn't going to happen until you can bring three quarters of fifty separate state legislatures with you, half of which are dominated by Republicans who are unlikely ever to agree to a limitation on gun ownership.

There are a couple of things which particularly puzzle me in this

The emphasis on schools - bit horrified to hear up thread that this may be a reporting artefact as this will only encourage 'shooters' seeking notoriety and fame.
Surely there's an argument for re-dressing that imbalance and also giving minimal details about the assailant to starve potential 'shooters' of toxic publicity?

The other thing which partly relates to the many non gun-owning Americans who would support some kind of gun control and the uneven distribution of guns in the population is that there is the potential for saturation of gun ownership [notwithstanding gun hoarders who can have 100s of firearms]

I read a few years ago that for this reason new markets were being sought by retailers - particularly among women [cute pink guns wh easily fit in your handbag] and children [cool accessories to impress peers].

Would this be an area to encourage resistance/limit advertising?

Though the xmas photo above maybe suggests that particular horse has already bolted

I lived in Arizona for a while before returning to the UK
ZERO gun control
vile

Details are so important here. 10 of those 27 were all ratified on the same day. And also at a time when the US consisted of 14 states. Basically the equivalent of Cornwall deciding something and the rest of the UK just going along with it for the rest of time. Also 200 years ago, the debate and people in charge of our systems were very different people - more like the British you might say. This is my whole point. No American/person living in the US on this thread is saying the current situation is good. We aren't even saying it can't be changed. All we are saying is that you need to understand the difference in the way the political system works here to the UK snd that might help people understand why it's not just a matter of changing a law. Chicago is a good example. High level of gun control with a high level of gun crime. Why? Because it's in the state of Illinois which has lower levels of gun control and there is no border to stop guns at the city edge. Another example. New York city voted to ban concealed carry guns from large parts of Manhattan. The gun fanatics took the city to court and got it overturned. Now in this case, NYC got creative (bc it's NYC) and found a law that said guns can't be conceal carried in areas of high security such as airports and times square. So they simply redesignated a massive section of Manhattan as times square. That is already being challenged in court. Two good examples of how federal, local and random laws and regulations prevent those who want to make massive changes from doing them. Not that we don't keep trying.

Oh dear not this again.

Keep in mind that several states DID pass strict gun laws, like New York and California.
The supreme court struck them down. So political willpower isn't enough, and the last time the US repealed a constitutional amendment was Prohibition. It's very difficult to do.

It's also extremely revealing if you analyse the statistics. gun violence isn't equally spread, at all. it's regional, racial, and class based. The South has both the highest rates of gun violence and the most permissive laws about guns--and they're a vicious cycle. meanwhile they call New York a hellhole but it's one of the safest cities in America. Even within cities there's massive differences.

@newyorker74 IIRC Illinois has, or had, fairly strict laws, at least in the city of Chicago... but I'm not sure the suburbs do, and Indiana surely doesn't. New York has strict laws, but Pennsylvania is 90 minutes away, and it doesn't. Patchwork legislation is a big problem when people can travel a short distance to avoid the law, or go to a gun show.

You're right, they love their guns more than they love their children.

We cull wild boar in the UK. It doesn't take an AR15.

www.aphis.usda.gov/aphis/ourfocus/wildlifedamage/operational-activities/feral-swine/feral-swine-damage

www.hogmanoutdoors.com/blog/whyareferalhogshardtohunt

@knitnerd90
@newyorker74
@Britinme

Have all replied after your post trying to explain why so many of the solutions that might look simple and common sense from outside are anything but when you actually understand how politics and government and the judiciary and state vs federal laws intersect in the US. I also don't think any of us have offered up 'it's in the constitution' as a justification, but the fact that you can dismiss that so easily shows exactly how little you do understand. Nobody would be happier than me to see the second amendment in the dustbin, but the reality of what it would take to make that happen is the sticking point.

I’m sure a mumsnet thread will convince the American people to give up their guns

Or so many men being lazy abusive arseholes.

But still MNers keep discussing this things.

I own and enjoy firearms but even I baulk at America's unhealthy obsession with firearms, I don't believe there's any really easy fix, it's been developed since the 1700's and was cemented into their being during the 1800's, banning guns isn't going to happen; it's enshrined in their constitution and to try would just be a way to speed run into a civil war.

Wise words.

The safest places to live with the lowest level of crime both in the USA and in the UK are those with the highest level of LEGAL gun ownership.

Given the number of guns in the USA the only thing gun control would do is lower legal gun ownership, criminals would care.

The UK handgun ban " worked" because we never really had a problem prior to Dunblane. Had the local police force done its job properly that massacre would never have happened.

Gun crime in the UK is way higher than pre ban.

It's worth reading about the links to Thomas Hamilton and the local senior police.

Hand gun ownership was heavily policed and when the ban came in, every registered gun was handed in.

We couldn't punish Hamilton, so we punished the innocent.

Many in the USA believe they have an inherent right to ownership, that government doesn't grant rights to citizens. Taking their guns away or even registering them would lead to a war.

Funny how anti gun politicians, the first thing they do when they gain power is surround themselves with people carrying guns. UK too, not just the USA.

I am not saying I would wish USA style gun laws in the UK but it is far from the simple gun control is good stuff UK people often believe.

I am ignorant in the American law system so do forgive me (willing to learn if anyone replies!) - but is there not a way to tighten the law up? Make it harder to own certain types of guns, make it harder to get a license, etc,? like not get rid of the amendment but just make it harder and a longer process to be able to get a gun? And yearly or quarterly reviews of said licensing etc.?

again, I admit I am ignorant on the American law system so I am not sure if or how it would work in practice.

I got into this argument with a guy in America and he provided evidence that you were safer as a citizen if you did carry a gun. He was a rabid supporter of the NRA. I guess the genie is out of the bottle and however many guns are handed out to responsible citizens there are far more in the hands of criminals. Asking the responsible citizens to surrender guns is crazy if you know criminals will keep there's. If I lived in America I'd have a gun. The only thing they can possible do is restrict people having assault rifles and screening out people with dodgy mental health. Even that isn't done.

A lot of people seem to think that the US could go from the present free-for-all to a UK-style of strictness overnight, or at least relatively quickly. I don't think this is the case at all. In the UK we've had a century of restrictions being tightened to get to where we are now and it would be hopelessly optimistic to imagine that the US would be able to progress any faster. Especially given the climate today in the US is much more gun-centric than it was here a hundred years ago. Private gun ownership in the UK back then was a lot lower than the rate of more than one gun to a person the US has now.

If the US were to tighten restrictions they would need to figure out a way to ensure that it wasn't just the legally-held firearms handed in, it wasn't just the responsible owners handing them in. A UK-style amnesty and then outright ban would just mean it left guns in the hands of criminals, emboldened because they knew that people were less likely to be able to fight back.

As to why America has so many guns, I think the cultural element is often missed. Guns were a necessary part of daily life for so long in a way that wasn't the case elsewhere. For centuries, guns were truly needed - to ward off invasion, to overthrow the government, to protect against indiginous people angry about having their land taken away, to protect against wildlife, to protect against criminals in an age of expansion when the enforcement of the law depended on "good" people being able to outgun the bad.

Many police forces in the US operate on the "deputy" system, a hangover from the days where sherriffs would swear in citizens to give them the power of the law and assist in catching/killing criminals.

Personally I think the balance needs to be somewhere between the US system and the UK system. Note that other countries around the world have much more relaxed gun laws than the UK does whilst not having a dramatically higher incidence of gun crime, especially mass shootings. Mass shootings are predominantly a US thing, aside from genuine terrorist attacks (I don't count most US shootings as terrorist incidents). They are fuelled by media coverage of other mass shootings - one incident inspires the next.

I got into this argument with a guy in America and he provided evidence that you were safer as a citizen if you did carry a gun.

Asking the responsible citizens to surrender guns is crazy if you know criminals will keep there's. If I lived in America I'd have a gun.

What was his evidence? Because there is none that supports this.

The trained police in the Uvalde shooting declined to go in and try to save young schoolchildren because they were afraid of the shooter's gun. Time and time again armed guards fail to stop these shootings. Do you really believe the average citizen is going to be a cool-handed hero and/or save themselves?

Many years ago, a relative of mine was at a scene where a gun was shot in a crowded area (not an AR-15 type with massive firepower). Guess what? The scene was absolute fucking chaos, even when the police arrived. It was almost impossible to figure out who the original shooter was in the mayhem. One person was injured. If others had randomly started shooting back, people would have been killed.

For what it's worth, I'm American and lived there until we moved to the UK quite a few years ago and I have never seen a gun other than the standard hunting rifle my father-in-law used to use on occasion and those carried by armed police.